Google Fiber Coming To 34 Additional Cities

Most of the country has been gazing jealously at the Google Fiber rollouts in three lucky locales, but as many as 34 cities in 9 metro areas will be joining the fun relatively soon. “Now that we’ve learned a lot from our Google Fiber projects in Kansas City, Austin and Provo, we want to help build more ultra-fast networks. So we’ve invited cities in nine metro areas around the U.S.—34 cities altogether—to work with us to explore what it would take to bring them Google Fiber,” wrote Milo Medin, VP of Google Access Services.

The official updates about which cities will be getting Google Fiber are coming by the end of the year, but the 9 metro areas on the table are Portland, OR; San Jose, CA; Salt Lake City, UT; Phoenix, AZ; San Antonio, TX; Nashville, TN; Atlanta, GA; and Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, NC.

(Click to enlarge)

Google and the civic leaders in those areas have a lot of work to do. They’ll need to sort out geographical challenges, decide on schedules, deal with existing local infrastructure issues, and various other practical matters.

It sounds as though Google is figuring out how to make these fiber networks a reality, and although the blog post warns that not every one of the 34 cities in the pipeline may end up with Google Fiber for one reason or another, this is tremendously good news. This means that Google Fiber isn’t just a pilot program with potential; the potential is being realized.